2D cell animator

I teach 2D cel animation to school kids in Delhi-NCR with Adobe software. Looking for people with similar interest. Where can I network?

Hi Jim,
Like so much in DIAdem, it is possible, but only with scripting. Now if you had asked to color the background of the FALSE cells red, that we can not do, but text color and text font can both be adapted on a cell-by-cell basis via a UserCommand.
I think there's an example that ships, but here's one I created,
Brad Turpin
DIAdem Product Support Engineer
National Instruments
Attachments:
Highlight Table Rows.zip ‏33 KB

Similar Messages

Cell animation basics

Hi All:
I am completely new to Flash and to animating generally. But
I understand some of the underlying basics. I have created and
scanned a series of drawings on acetate creating a Christmas card
with a chicken and an egg. I don't think I need to tween - just
need to go from one layer to the next! I have tried 3 times now to
import each cell into a separate layer and to create a rough
animation using the timeline and keyframes. I have read several
online tutorials and purchased a used Teach Yourself Flash 8
primer.
But I cannot get anything to work, i.e. cells don't seem to
line up, can't see them animate using the Play Handle. None of my
sources will explain to me exactly how to manipulate the timeline
for my purposes nor how to deal with layers such as mine (already
produced offline and lined up pixel to pixel in PS, etc).
Can someone please recommend a free online tutorial which
explains animating cells - but also starts from the beginning - do
this, then do that?
Thanks!
Using Flash 8 Pro.

Tansle,
> Sorry to be such a pest - but I can't believe how
finicky
> this app is!
No worries. :) And you'll understand Flash in time. Like
anything
else, it just takes practice. I've been unicycling for four
or five years
now, but I still remember learning how to ride (and falling,
and falling,
and falling!). Unicycles are finicky too.
> I have created an animation which despite the document
> being set to 803 x 1086 pixels ... insisted on being
published
> at ~200 pixels across.
Did you test this as embedded in an HTML page? If so, it may
be that
the HTML was coded in such a way as to resize the SWF, in the
same way that
HTML can be coded to resize a JPG.
> While trying to align my background/nest,using the
Property
> inspector, I found that these incorrect dimensions were
shown
> next to the alignment dimensions and if I changed them
the
> document would publish to its correct size.
Aha. Then maybe this was simply an incorrect setting on your
background
image? As you discovered, that's easy enough to fix. You can
use the
Property inspector to adjust dimensions, and you can also use
the Transform
panel (or simply resize things by hand with the Free
Transform tool).
> 1)Is there any way of changing about 25 instances at one
time
> to publish to a specific size?
If the background image doesn't change, then you only need a
single
instance of that image on the Stage (one keyframe in frame 1,
and simply
frames after that). You might be able to affect numerous
instances at once
if the original Library asset is sized incorrectly: changing
its dimensions
in the Library will effect every instance of that asset. For
example, if
you have a background symbol in the Library -- a graphic
symbol, say -- that
contains your imported image, your image might be sized to
50%. In such a
case, the graphic symbol displayed at full size (100%) would
only display
the image at half size. Makes sense, right? In that scenario,
you could
enter the timeline of the graphic symbol, set the image to
100%, and then
the symbol would show the image at 100% wherever it appears
in a timeline
(unless the symbol itself is resized somewhere). The
principles of this
symbol hierarchy are important in Flash.
> 2) When published, the document image does not fill the
window.
> I can see the edge of the 600 x 811 pixel document. If I
Modify>
> Document the document to 600 x 811 it fills it more but
not fully.
What you're seeing inside Flash may not be exactly what you
see when the
SWF is embedded in your HTML page. Flash will try to show you
as much of
the SWF's content as possible, but if you resize the SWF
window, you may
indeed see letterbox or pillarbox rectangles -- in the same
way that
widescreen content has letterbox rectangles on a standard TV.
Embed that
SWF in an HTML file at the dimensions of your FLA document,
and all should
be well. Based on your notes earlier, that might be 803 x
1086. At this
point, you're saying 600 x 811. Whatever the FLA document's
boundaries are,
that should be the embedding dimensions of your HTML code.
Anything else --
especially a different aspect ratio -- may show edges or
content that should
be hidden by those edges.
> a) How do I make a document that opens into a window the
same
> size as my document?
That requires JavaScript inside the HTML document.
Dreamweaver features
a built-in code snippet for exactly this endeavor: Behaviors
panel (in
Dreamweaver) > Open Browser Window.
> b) Since the document does not fill the window and I had
to tweak
> pixels, the left edge of the flash document is uneven -
I see a pixel of
> one alternating instance over and over again at the end
(because it
> crosses the edge of the frame).
>
> Can I get rid of this really annoying effect?
Either keep tweaking your pixel placement or make sure to
embed your
content at the proper aspect ratio. You could also experiment
with masking
the entire movie, but that would probably be overkill.
> 3) My background doesn't show up. ... All instance were
supposed to
> be from scanned graphics that I used PS's Background
Eraser tool on
> and saved as a copy to jpg. Are they not transparent
enough?
The JPG format doesn't support transparency. Export your
Photoshopped
images as PNGs instead (use PNG 24 for smooth edges).
David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog,
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."

Create 3d cel animation look after effects

Im trying to achieve this look for a project I am working on. (Link below), The artist said that they only used after effects for all the cube animations, and was wondering if anybody new a tutorial or guide that would help with best way to acieve this. Im assuming its all shape layers, but would love any feedback, Thanks!
Link: The illusion of life on Vimeo

There was a recent thread on this exact subject.
Illusion of Life animation - How?
There's no secret, no plug-in, just a lot of time practicing your technique and using the distortion tools available in AE. FYI... In my response I included a project that shows how to do some of the techniques.

Rotoscoping techniques: Frame Animation vs Video Timeline

Hi. I am using Photoshop CS6 and CC.
I am looking for an easy workflow for rotoscoping a video (for the purpose of drawing on it to create animated look)
and came across two different techniques for achieving the same purpose:
1. frame animation as explained here
2. Video Timeline as explained here
seems to me the first technique is much more error prone.
I am a bit confused on the proper use of those 2 features - when to use which
as I see it Frame animation is for:
1.making GIF'S from your current layer stack
2.scanning a drawing by hand element that is supposed to appear in a stop motion fashion.
and Video Timeline is for:
1.real editing with layers moving in different points in time (which really can't see why would you do that in photoshop instead of AE or Premiere)
2.cell animation with onion skin
2.making blank video layer over a real one and create a live drawing.
any Insights will be greatly appreciated

thanks for the reply JJ.
I think I have a better idea on what each tool is all about:
allow me to sum it up for anyone who will look at this and for me too.
this is a clarification of these different tools especially related to rotoscoping but not just.
contributions would be appreciated
Frame Animation
useful for controlling each specific frame in a sequence of animated frames.
in rotoscoping this is useful for instances where you want to work with many layers
thus preserving the capability to change your work with different layers containing different data.
for instance: hair, face, legs etc. like the following example here
also efficient in making GIF's like here
Advantages:
1. more layers - more control
2. easy to make GIFS by changing each layers transformations like here
or here and would be cumbersome to do in Video Timeline
Limitations:
1. layout requires a bit of getting used to for instance: seconds for each frame and not overall frame rate - you have to select all of them to change them globally (there is a panel option for that though)
and also each frame contains all of the layers with only the specific ones visible and position differently (like layer comps).
if you are not careful you could make a mess of things by changing visibility of the wrong layers or worse
so - order, color labeling and grouping is paramount. an example of a good workflow is here
2. you have to make your own shortcuts since next frame/previous frame/first frames don't have shortcuts.
3. there is no audio
Video Timeline
useful for "classic" video editing - you get a timeline with layers
that you can trim and make transitions.
great for drawing on video or classic drawn Cell animation.
you can also insert a blank video layer and draw on it.
as explained here
Advantages:
1. familiar timeline structure - easy to understand and not mess it up. you can change the framerate and work like a real video workflow.
2. great for rotoscoping on video - you could insert a blank video layer and draw frame by frame on the same layer making it easy.
3. great for cell animation because onion skin features are an option
4. keyboard shortcuts are a click way by changing the panel options to "enable timeline shortcut keys"
5. there is audio
Limitations:
1. not as efficient as Frame Animation for GIF animations or animation that requires a lot of layers or different kind of layers.

Animation: would this work?

Say you want do make a cartoon, the old way. You draw all the cells, photograph them, and load them all in sequence into Imovie.
It won't play as a smooth animation because you can't reduce the screen duration of a still shot down to 1/25th of a second.
But if instead of taking a photo of each cell, what if you take a very short burst of video of each one, and load all those little video segments into Imovie. Then, you delete all frames of each segment except ONE. Shouldn't that leave you with a series of single frames, each of a different animation cell, that will run as a smooth animation when you hit play?
I wanted to ask before I start. It'll take a loooong time, I know.

... I want "Disney-smooth. ...Disney? that WAS the company doing cell anim, right....?
ok, the Disney classics as "Snowwhite" were painted every cell (not easy to get: the DVD has some "making of", showing the REAL Snowwhite.. forgot the actress' name, and how they used that as a blueprint for the paintings..), but most productions do 1:2/1:3 or higher.. the cheap Asian production do a mixture, they use realtime camera movements and some computer aided animations..... do some research with DVDs of your favorite, use the frame-forward-feature of your player, you'll be surprised
I can' recommend any good book (I'm sure, there are many), my knowledge is a collection from the last 30y I'm interest in that topic...-
happy painting, "Disney smooth" (<< I like that term!) is 24 paitings per second (doing that with video, you do 25/30fps)... maybe that is the true reason why the gave up that part of the company... besides: a shame! they earn enough money with the productions of Pixar...
I would spend some money on that boink ploink boom what's its name??... software......esp. "onioning" is very easy done with video+Mac...
A Mac is just a tool, but with your talent... probably, you'll be the next Carl Barks (ok, he never did animations, but he was THE BEST at Disney...), it was Georg Lucas, who said, he's afraid of these new "Garage Movie Makers". ;-))

Kinda OT: 2d animation progs w/ audio track underlay?

Hi everyone -
I'm trying to find 2d animation software - preferably with "traditional" cel animation - that I can animate over scrubbable background audio.
Basically what I would like to be able to do is to animate talking, dancing, cooking, whatever over a pre-recorded/composed track!
Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Andrew

Kevin Brock wrote:
Toon Boom Studio will let you create traditional cel animations. It's aimed squarely at those with a classic pen/paper background. It will allow for the import of audio & it is scrubbable. (Too, there's a downloadable demo version you can try.)
HTH
Cool, thanks again, Kevin, for adding to the discussion.
The key phrase on the ToonBoom site is : *Add audio tracks and lip-sync your animation*
You ought to be able to find something similar either claimed or discussed on each of the other products' marketing pages or in their associated support forums.
bogiesan
Message was edited by: David Bogie Chq-1

New website for review

I've just finished building my first website. Any comments or
critique welcome. It was built using Dreamweaver 8.
Thanks
Freelance Artist
http://www.styl3d.co.uk

Stubins wrote:
> I've just finished building my first website. Any
comments or
> critique welcome. It was built using Dreamweaver 8.
Thanks
>
> Freelance Artist
>
>
http://www.styl3d.co.uk
Tells the visitor nothing about you, or what you want them to
do. There is
no indication if the work is your own original work, whether
you have
copyright to it, or if you've just copied it from somewhere
else.
Write a biography section.
If you want people to hire you, say so and provide some
references.
Instead of just showing images and the bare information,
explain your role
in the process (especially on films). When doing this, don't
assume that the
visitor has any special knowledge; if you did some cell
animation, you also
have to provide an explanation of what cell animation is...
Odd that you provide little buttons on all the menu items,
but the menu
items are only active on the text part - I'd expect the
button area to be a
roll-over as well.
HTH,
Pete.
Peter Connolly
http://www.acutecomputing.co.uk
Derby
UK
Skype ID: acutecomputing

10.1.3.3 release on Solaris x86

Hi guy's,
Anyone know when the 6148874 patchset (10.1.3.3) will be available for Solaris (x86)?
Thanks.

Not sure if you already figured this out, my reply isn't exactly timely.
Had the same issue with Windows XP, we resolved by turning off cell animations for Excel. Can do by adding HKCU - Software - Microsoft - Office - Version # - Excel - Options, add DWORD Options95=1
This fixed the slow scrolling issue for us, as well as an issue where sessions would get disconnected back to the VDI log in screen when trying to scroll around or delete big chunks of rows

Global Performance Cache - Seeking Opinions

Hi Guys -
I am still debating whether to buy CS6. None of the new features interest me nearly as much as the GPC; my decision to upgrade depends a lot on what you guys say about it.
I've used AfterFX long enough to know (since AE7 Pro) that the speed of a RAM preview depends on many factors. Nevertheless I hope that won't preclude you from giving me a general sense of the GPC's effectiveness.
Is the GPC so good that it's worth upgrading for that feature alone? Is it an obvious improvement compared to previous versions, one you appreciate all the time? Or is the benefit minimal, a small step in the right direction but not something that should weigh heavily in my decision to upgrade?
Thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts, I appreciate it.

I agree with Todd that CS6 isn't as "wonky" as it was at first. I also agree that I can't stand to go back because everything is faster.
This paragraph of yours is very revealing:
For me very often it's just the opposite. I'm asked to make a title sequence, a dvd menu, a wedding video "more interesting please." We talk, I learn what I can, make some sketches, take notes... then I sit down with AfterFX (and Encore, Prem Pro etc.). I tend to use the same effects over and over because I don't want to (or have time to) wait for unpredictable outcomes, and changing even the simplest command, wiggle(3,4) to wiggle(3,5) means the whole comp has to re-render in RAM. It's aggravating.
This is exactly what I mean when I talk about doing motion studies at 1/4 or 1/2 rez. Make your motion experiments on simple layers without effects. I tend to use a lot of pencil sketches shot with my phone, simple shape layers, and text layers all with nothing but motion to figure out what the scene is going to look like. I'll even often send two, three, or even 10 different motion studies to a client via private Vimeo renders to decide how to proceed with the project. It's the same technique that cell animators and 3D artists use today. Pencil tests traditionally refer to cell animation but I use the term to describe any motion test from any app that does not have the finishing touches applied. Make a low rez 'pencil test' version of the animation to make sure things work before you paint, texture, and clean up the rest for final proof. The GMC in CS6 makes this kind of experimenting extremely fast. It also helps when you are doing the very last stages of your color and effects work on a frame. Both of these comprise less than 30% of my time working on a project and that's why I spend most of my 'creative time' with the caches turned off because they still hold on to an occasional frame or rendered in the background effect that I don't want to see.
You have a distinct disadvantage working with folks that are not in the production business because they are not usually comfortable with 'pencil tests' but there's nothing that says you can't use them to speed up your workflow. Just keep the ones that you like as separate comps, pick your favorite, finish it up and sent the client a nice completed proof. If they don't like it then you've got 2 or 3 or 10 other pencil sketch versions already done tyat you can quickly apply effects to and clean up for final approval.
Wouldn't you rather spend 2 hours on a DVD title checking the timing and motion with 10 versions and 1 hour adjusting the color, effects, and final look than 2 days fiddling around with 3 versions checking every frame at full rez. I'm just trying to give you a few pointers that will let you have some time in your life to do something other than sit in front of your screen and wait for full rez, full effect previews of your work.

*** Adobe Creative Suite 4 Now Shipping! After Effects CS4 New Features ***

Adobe have officially announced the upcoming Creative Suite 4 group of products, including
After Effects CS4,
CS4 Production Premium bundle, and
CS4 Master Collection.
After Effects CS4 Top New Features
b Live Adobe Photoshop 3D layers import
Import Adobe® Photoshop® 3D layers into Adobe After Effects® CS4, move them, animate cameras around them, adjust lighting, and composite them with other elements.
b Searchable timelines and projects and easier nested comp navigation
Locate any element in a comp or project with the new QuickSearch. Quickly navigate between nested comps with the new Mini-Flowchart.
b Compositions exported as layered projects
Export compositions as layered, XFL format projects that can be opened and edited in Adobe Flash® CS4 Professional software. Many After Effects assets such as text and Adobe Illustrator® artwork are preserved as vectors.
b Integrated workflow for mobile device authoring
Select devices in Adobe Device Central and automatically set up an After Effects project that targets those devices, with settings that match the targeted devices and the Render Queue setup to output to the proper codecs and resolutions.
b Numerous interface and workflow tweaks
Work more efficiently with dozens of user-requested changes, including the new Auto Resolution setting that only renders visible pixels when zooming in and out of a comp view, streamlined memory and multicore processing preferences, and more.
b Dynamic Link between Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Soundbooth
Using Adobe Creative Suite® 4 Production Premium software, now link Adobe Premiere® Pro sequences to an After Effects composition and After Effects comps to Adobe Soundbooth® with Adobe Dynamic Link.
b Independent keyframing of x, y, z values, plus 3D compositing improvements
Composite in 3D space more easily: Keyframe x, y, and z position values separately, and use the new unified camera, which makes the After Effects camera tool work more like those in 3D modeling applications.
b Cartoon effect
Instantly give live footage the look of cell animation. Stylize video by reducing the color palette of a clip and by emphasizing edges.
b Mocha for Adobe After Effects from Imagineer Systems
Use this powerful 2.5D planar tracking application from Imagineer Systems to track the motion of elements even in challenging shots where elements move offscreen or where there is motion blur or excessive grain.
b XMP metadata for asset intelligence
Now retain asset metadata while you work in After Effects. Add new project-, comp-, and layer-level metadata to streamline project tracking, and automate asset auditing and many other tasks.
Also note that
Adobe OnLocation, included in the CS4 Master Collection, Production Premium bundle, and with Premiere Pro, now runs natively in Mac OS X as well as Windows.
Adobe is offering some discounted upgrade incentive pricing for a limited time and/or pre-ordering. Some initial U.S. prices are as follows:
i Product___________________CS3 to CS4 Upgrade_______CS4 Full Purchase
After Effects CS3____________$299__________________$999
Production Premium CS3_______$599__________________$1699
Master Collection CS3_________$899__________________$2499
Please visit
www.adobe.com for accurate pricing, eligibility for upgrades and pre-orders in your region.
Click here to be notified when CS4 products are available for purchase and trial.

There's a list of the big new features in the
"New features in After Effects CS4" section of After Effects CS4 Help on the Web, and you can read about every little change to the UI in the
"User interface changes from After Effects CS3 to After Effects CS4" section.
But I thought that all of you who have posted requests to this wishlist might like to get specific responses to some of the items on this list.
First of all, though, I'd like to point out an innovative set of features that I think addresses a request that many of you have made... just not exactly as you asked for it. All of us have wanted a better way to see into and navigate among nested compositions (precompositions). The Composition Mini-Flowchart and Composition Navigator make moving around in a complex project much, much faster and easier. Telling you to see the
"Opening and navigating nested compositions" section isn't going to do this feature set justice. You'll only appreciate how slick this is when you get your hands on it.
Oh, and we reversed the behavior of double-clicking versus Option-double-clicking a precomposition layer: Now double-clicking opens the source composition in the Composition panel, not the precomposition layer in the Layer panel.
Now, on to the specific responses...
David Wigforss:
> I completely agree that the graph editor needs work....
> Position values need to be seperated into 3 distinct values that can
> be adjusted independant of each other.
Done.
See
"Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually".
Mark Weiss:
> would like to see XDCam EX import capabilities.
Done.
See
"Supported import formats".
AndyClarke:
> all effects in 32 bit or float
Not quite all. But more are, including all of the 3D Channel effects, which is a category that really needed the upgrade.
See
"Effects and animation presets".
AndyClarke
> prob a really simple little thing but a 'centre anchor point' button could be handy?
Move layers so that their anchor points are in the center of the composition or view?
If so, then done. See the first tip on the
"Move layers in space" page.
silversurfer:
> An intra-project search function that displays properties of every layer.
Done.
See
"Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels".
(Plus, you can now use the shortcut FF to show instances of missing effects. See
"About effects".)
Thomas Craul:
> the possibility to expand all of the effects parameters in the effect controls window at once.
> just like when expanding all layer properties or all subfolders with strg+klick (little arrow).
Done.
See
"Shortcuts: showing properties in the Effect Controls panel".
Pietje Bel:
> I'd like to see some features I can use with my tablet (I got it for photoshop, though
> I use AE even more than I use photoshop).
We've had features for using the pen dynamics with the paint tools for a while. See
"Brushes and the Brushes panel".
That said, we've made some improvements under the hood that should make using a pen better (e.g., modifying the sensitivity during certain click and drag operations).
Darren McNeill:
> Simple, I would like After Effects to have the ability to extrude Text in 3d space.
> Nothing complicated, just be able to create 3d Text.
How about the ability to do this in Photoshop and then import the 3D object layer into After Effects?
See
"Using 3D object layers from Photoshop"
invisiblerabbit:
> Being able to specify how many processors to use in the multiprocessing preference pane.
Done. Plus other improvements in this area.
See
"Memory & Multiprocessing preferences".
invisiblerabbit:
> I'd love a setting either in the preferences or the output module to write project
> information (importantly: the name of the project) into the metadata of the rendered file.
Done. And then some. On steroids.
See
"XMP metadata in After Effects".
Navarro Parker:
> I'd love AE projects to be searchable. Having the ability to search for comp names or source footage
> names within projects from the Finder would be fantastic.
Done, as long as you have the means to search within XML files. The new XML project file format opens up a lot of scripting possibilities, too.
See
"About projects".
David Bogie:
> I humbly ask the Adobe After Effects team to concentrate first on fixing anything
> and everything that is broken or buggy before adding any more complexity to this application.
> Make it more elgant, make it easier to use, make it faster... sure, fine. But invest the
> creative energy and geek resources to making it work flawlessly instead of adding more stuff.
Though we did add "more stuff", we also spent a lot of time polishing the application this time. The number of small tweaks to address pain points was very large.
AndyClarke:
> I just don't like the help browser.
Better?
After Effects CS4 Help on the Web
Laurie Hogan:
> I got a simple one. Can AE have Spell Check.
AE Enhancers provides
a spelling checker script.
Laurie Hogan:
> Also Can there be more integration between AE and Apple FCP.
I give a link to a script from Dale Bradshaw on the
"Supported import formats" page (at the bottom of the page).

How to make your drawings into a movie?

There is this series on youtube called 'Simons Cat' and I know its only his drawings that are made into a movie.
I know how to make a video with pictures just the still pictures, thats not what I want, I want my drawings to move so its like 'Simons Cat'
If you want to know what I mean, look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP1Pk62X7XQ&feature=endscreen&NR=1
Mostly preferred to use iMovie!:)
Many Thanks,
Chris

Simon Tofield draws and animates directly in Adobe Flash. It's frame-by-frame animation aka "cell animation"; that is, Simon creates a new drawing for each frame of the movie (though of course many elements are probably copied from the previous frame. If you don't want to use Flash, there are a number of other animation programs available. See:
http://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/animation
Many animators, those who prefer to work in more traditional physical media, just make their drawings and photograph them to stitch into a movie. Up to you what you feel most comfortable working with.
Regards.

Inconsistent PDF Page Number keyframe behavior?

I'm doing some character animation and found that key-framed multi-page PDFs could be really useful. For example, the mouth of my character is made of a multi-page PDF; each page of the file has a different facial expression on it. I can keyframe this asset to easily change from one expression to the other.
I seem to find that the more complex my sequence gets, the less reliable the page changes become.
Anybody else have experience with this or any words of wisdom or work-arounds?
Thanks!

Your PDF is a collection of "frames". It's no different than an image sequence or a simple "movie" consisting of one frame per image. You have the option of selecting the Page Number of a PDF file, but the other two options allow you to use either an Emitter or a Replicator to select which frame to display... so there are other ways of handling your "cell animation" needs.
However, what I'm suggesting is actually an old "practice"/"trick" from older versions of Motion which is to render out a portion of the animation and bring the animation, already "baked", back into the project. Earlier versions of Motion actually had that option in the Export dialog (to automatically insert the render file back into the project) as a way of easing resource demands on the application that would slow it down excessively.
So for your project, keyframe/animate the PDF and for simplicity, make sure it's exactly on the canvas where it would be with all the other content, then: *turn off* all the other content (simply option click on the PDF checkbox in the layers list) and Export (ProRes 4444 - with Alpha). Bring the exported file back into your project and turn off the PDF layer (you can leave it in the project if you have to make modifications later on - then re-export - etc..). The pre-baked animation should always play perfectly regardless of what other layer animations are doing. And, by turning off all the other layers when exporting, you should be cutting off any interference to your object that they would be causing.

Slow motion 50% export H.264 MOV (at half frame rate)

Hi,
I'm using a QuickTime MOV file (H.264, 1080p/59.94fps, 15 seconds) and have set slow motion to 50% (= 30 seconds).
Can anyone confirm that when I export this clip to 29.97fps I won't lose frames?
I have Compressor and think I found nearly all required settings except:
- Key frames - shall I use automatic or 24 or what? (How can I find out what the original key frame value was?)
- Frame reordering - shall I uncheck this option? (What does it mean? It's not in the manual.)
Many thanks!

If you want to make absolutely sure you won't lose frames, you should manually set a project to 29.97fps, import your 60/59.94fps and conform the video (Retime menu > Conform Speed [the retime menu is the 2nd one from the left over the effects browser area/under the inspector area]). FCPX will automatically frame for frame adjust the video to fit to the slower frame rate.
Key frames (video compression, not animation): a key frame is a complete image -- 100% pixels in use. Every frame between the key frames are only the parts of the image that change from the last frame (like Cel animation). Setting Automatic allows the software to make the best choices of when and where to create a complete frame. Otherwise, you can experiment with different values (up to All, which is pretty much no compression) to see what kinds of results you get and the overall quality (use very short pieces, like 5 -10 seconds.) High motion areas in video are always going to be the most challenging with respect to compression (particularly bitrate), so... it's worth figuring out what settings you like that will give the best results (and 5-10second clips don't take that long to render.) I generally use Automatic and adjust the bitrates to give the best overall results (which occasionally requires testing segments.)
Frame reordering: allows applications to "decompress" video frames in a different order than they are played, thereby allowing those apps that understand it a way to work faster. Larry Jordan suggests that this setting always be set for H.264 video (although I don't if I'm uploading to YouTube -- I try not to give YouTube any excuses for recompressing my video, so I try to have it already optimized before uploading... so far, it seems to be working.)

After Effects 2015 Wishlist

Hey guys,
I didn't find a 2015 wishlist so I thought I would start one
We are using After Effects in a very unconventional way, so my request might be a bit out there
My wishlist
- Support android .9.png and densities and iOS x1, x2 and x3 densities in a footage item
- Support for sprite sheet cell animations
- Support for style sheets
All of them should offer an extendscript API so they can be processed by plugins and exporters/importers.

Per my vote here: Happy New Year! ~ and a question… my wish is for the core level of the program to be rewritten in such a way that these performance increases are successful. That and for the entire video pipeline at Adobe to continue to be up with the latest formats and codecs (H.265, etc.) I'll save any other wishes until after the performance enhancements come.
For those who are considering posting, file a feature request too. Be as specific as possible: Adobe - feature request and bug report

Memory handling for big footage, wrong settings, bug?

Hi
I am getting huge time differences in rendering, a full res render takes ca 100 times longer than a half res, where I would normally expect maybe 4 times longer.
Here's the details:
I'm making an 30 sec animation in NTSC, the material is high resolution illustrations in .psd format with lots of layers. I parent and animate the layers in after effects, ie no cell animation or sequences.
A couple of characters with loose limbs and some backgrounds, and the comp is probably a few hundred layers nested within comps etc.
All this is fine when previewing in half resolution, it takes a little while for the program to load all the layers for every new scene, and then it ticks along good, since it's static illustrations with position and rotation keys.
Previewing the 30 secs in half res takes a couple of minutes tops. Totally fine.
But when switching to full res everything goes unbelievably slow. It takes more than 1 hour 30 minutes. The exact same animation that previewed in 1-2 minutes in half res.
I am using
AE CS3, 8.0.2.27
8-core Mac Pro, Leopard 10.5.3
10 GB Ram
Multiprocessor rendering is switched on.
I see all the AE instances in the Activity Monitor, most of the time they're working on less than 10%.
So I'm guessing the cache is sufficient for the half res stuff, and for full res it has to load everything for every single frame? Still though, it seems that it's even slower than that. It seems like there's some sort of bottle neck.
Some good advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, L

Turn off multiprocessing. Loading and unloading your hunky files may take way longer than the actual processing. For the half res previews, they would be loaded from the cache in many situations, thus not affecting I/O speed at all. Also your math is not really right. Depending on how an effect works, render times can go up indefinitely, e.g. if it works strictly pixel-per-pixel insrtead of a coherent single one-pass buffer. In any case, the res is 2^2 times as high, so a multiplier of 8 is to be expected on memory consumption and possibly processing as well... Not sure where your project goes wrong, though, would require soem more info about footage types, blendmodes, effects and so on.
Mylenium

2D cell animator

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